Warmth
by PeteyDG
Summary: I've gone to the dark side and written a slash fic starring Jay and Bob . . . don't worry, dear homophobes, Unlikely Friendship will remain non-slash. Pre-Dogma, cohesive with Askewniverse canon. Why Jay so loves the layered look and how he and Silent B


Title:Warmth

Author: PeteyDG

Disclaimer:Wish I could say I own Jay and Bob, or at the very least, just beautiful, tortured Jay, but no. No I don't. Kevin, Miramax, ViewAskew et al have that pleasure.

Rating: An R, I suppose. References to sex, some talk of cocks and tongues, implied child sexual abuse . . . but no actual penetration portrayed, so there you go.

Notes: I wouldn't have believed it myself, but I've been reading so much Jay and Bob slash out on the net and it's so inspiring that I just couldn't help slashing them myself (which by the way plays hell with keeping my almost father/son version of them on track in that Other Jay and Silent Bob tome of mine). And on that note . . . 

Alternative universe to my own "An Unlikely Friendship" Jay and Silent Bob, but pretty cohesive with canon in the Askewniverse as far as timelines go. Pre-Dogma.

**__**

Warmth

by PeteyDG

Jay likes warm things. Thick blankets and six layers of clothes and coats you can get lost in. He likes coffee too, and hot tea and hot chocolate, anything comes in a scalding cup he can wrap his long, slender fingers around.

Jay likes warm things because he's always so fucking cold. Chilled straight down to his marrow. 

Can't remember a time it wasn't that way. Heat was always off in that fucking rat hole tenement he grew up in, bed was always hard and covered with nothing more than a thin sheet, cause his mother and father seldom spent a penny for anything they couldn't snort or smoke or shoot up. Drugs provided their warmth. They gave little thought to the thin, shaking boy sleeping fitfully in the back room.

At least until he got pretty enough to sell. 

Fourteen years old, honey blonde hair hanging down his back in waves and lazy curls, sleepy hazel green eyes and a deceptively innocent face, almost six feet tall already, lean frame, long graceful limbs. A walking wet dream, and his parents knew it too well, and one day when it came time to pay a dealer and they didn't have cash, they offered their son instead.

That's when he left. His lip split during the failed struggle, his ass burning from the forced penetration, Jay had grabbed every thread of clothing he owned and the thin sheet from his bed, still sticky with semen, and shoved them into a battered gym bag, thrown his few comics on top and walked out the door.

Fourteen and homeless by choice in the dead of a New Jersey winter. First things lost were the comics, rifled through then torn apart page by page because the fucker ripping him off was angry there was nothing of "value" in the bag.

The clothes were next, the few he hadn't been wearing. Wiser by then, he slept on top of the gym bag, but the effort hadn't really mattered in the end. They'd even taken the dirty sheet.

Last thing to go was the absurd notion that he was somehow safer on the street than he had been in his own bedroom. That without junkie parents pimping him out, he'd be able to keep his ass to himself.

Dark alley, weakened by too little food and too little sleep, it had still taken two of them to hold him while a third ripped his jeans down to his ankles and nailed him to the pavement.

Colder than he'd ever been, after they'd gone, bruised and bleeding and too tired to even pull his pants back up for a while, so he'd just laid there breathing in the stench of the garbage in the dumpster that hid him from general view.

Coulda died that night, Jay remembers now, hands closed around a cup of coffee. He sure as hell thought about it. Thought about just letting go right there. No need for a gun or a knife or a drug or a noose, as close to hell as he already was, coulda just closed his eyes and let his heart stop beating and faced whatever it was that came next.

But he hadn't. The instinct to survive was too fucking strong, honed by fourteen years of ducking and dodging angry fists when his folks were sober and jonesing, fourteen years of scavenging for food in sparse, cockroach infested cupboards when they were high.

"Hey." Voice over his shoulder demands attention, soft and sweet as it is, and hardly ever heard. Clear even in the noise of this bar. Waiting for a connection, a sale, but it don't look like the guy's gonna show tonight, and that's what Silent Bob is thinking at Jay right now. Doesn't have to speak to say that. Then he eyes the cup of coffee, wondering why it isn't a beer, and his brows arch.

"Cold." Jay answers. "Just really fucking cold tonight, some reason." For a split second, the hardness Bob adopts on the job shifts and his face goes tender with worry or concern, or maybe just love. Warmest thing of all, his Silent Bob.

Probably woulda been dead by now, by eighteen, razor sharp survival instinct or no, if it hadn't been for Silent Bob. He'd found Jay outside a pool hall a few years ago, blood dribbling into his eyes from a gaping cut on his forehead, babbling incoherently. 

Jay never had remembered the confrontation that had left him senseless, but he thanked God for it every so often, because otherwise, well, otherwise maybe Bob woulda never happened to him.

Couple of years older than Jay and a few inches shorter, Silent Bob was a big fucker, broad chested and strong and a little bit fat around the middle. Silky dark brown hair to his shoulders, dark brown beard and moustache framing full red lips, dark brown eyes that were always watching, always scanning for trouble. Didn't talk much, hence the name.

Bob had been dealing back then, same as Jay'd been trying to do but with a damn sight more success. A little weed here, a little blow there, using his ominous silence and his bulk to collect debts for some of the other guys. He knew of the boy, watched him run in their small town circle with something more than professional interest. Skinny, twitchy, a mouth that never shut. Ferociously beautiful and way too young. When he'd found Jay bloody and disoriented outside Sharky's, there hadn't been a question of what to do.

Took the kid back to his place, doctored the cut, cleaned away the blood and put him under a blanket on the couch.

Jay would never have gone with him had he been in his right mind. He took it in the mouth every so often for a twenty or a fifty, if he could get it, but that was where he drew the line, and he didn't go home or even to a shit can motel with anybody to do that, cause inside there were doors and locks and blind corners that could kill you.

And of course, he wouldn't have believed Bob had anything so innocent as a bandaid and a night on the couch in mind.

But he had, indeed. 

Jay had bolted the next morning, after a hot breakfast and a hot cup of coffee, flinging a few harsh words that Bob had left unanswered. Harsh because he felt unnaturally safe in that apartment, across the table from this dark, quiet presence that radiated so much warmth. Harsh because he needed distance.

They crossed paths sometimes after that, Jay uneasy but courteous because he knew better than to fuck with Silent Bob, who had a reputation for cold violence. One that Jay wasn't quite sure he believed anymore, not after that morning of eggs and bacon and coffee and a soft touch to his shoulder which left a warm handprint that seemed to last for days. 

He tried to tell himself it was the debt that itched at the back of his mind, the thought that he owed the tubby fucker something, and not the memory of that warmth that finally drove him to suggest a beer and a toke one day outside the local QuickStop, his treat.

They'd hardly been apart since.

  
Hadn't been an easy alliance, at first, make no mistake about that. Jay was guarded and prickly and quick to anger. The ache that frequently tented his jeans whenever Bob was around made him defensive. Didn't care about being gay or bi or whatever the fuck, and he sure as hell didn't give a fuck what somebody else might say about who or what gave him a boner. 

It wasn't that he worried whether Bob's door swung that way, either, cause the looks and the quirked eyebrows and of course, the rock hard erections that seemed to answer his own, they spoke volumes, said things Bob never had to utter with that damned silent tongue of his.

And for that matter, if it had just been sex, that woulda been fine and easy. Shit, they woulda banged each other two weeks into the friendship if that had been the case. 

They'd struck a business partnership by then, at Bob's suggestion. He wasn't much of a salesman, owing to the propensity for silence, and Jay wasn't much of a muscle, so why not combine their efforts and double their money? And while they were at it, the kid didn't really have a place to stay, did he, so why not move in? They'd share the rent.

And so he had. And yeah, that night, they probably woulda fucked like rabbits that night if it had just been about sex.

But it hadn't. Oh no it hadn't. It hadn't been about anything as simple as sex from the beginning, from that first morning when the sunlight slanting in through the blinds had pulled Jay from his muddled, headachey sleep on Bob's leather couch and he'd screamed because he didn't know where the fuck he was.

And Bob, big, soft, warm Silent Bob had been right there, put that gentle hand on his shoulder and it had calmed him instantly. No drug, no booze, no sex, no anything had ever felt this way. That hand had opened his heart and shattered his walls in a millisecond.

Which scared the hell out of Jay. Why wouldn't it?

Sounds silly now, he muses, smiling as Bob settles onto the stool next to him, waiting patiently for him to finish the coffee, surveilling the bar with practiced ease. Jay tosses a few careless insults at him and sips slowly, scoots over a bit until their bodies make contact and the warmth, God that warmth that his Bob always carries, seeps into him and makes its way down into his chilly bones.

Silent Bob smirks at the insults and continues his survey of the crowd. The words mean nothing, just the bluster that Jay wears like a coat of armor, nowadays only in front of others. The firm ass against his thigh, though, that he has to work to ignore. 

Bob doesn't care, either, what people think. He's got enough reputation now, and enough muscle to back it up, that no one would dare to bother them anyway. It's the responsibility that keeps him in check. But Jay, firecracker that he is, he likes to stir the shit and make life difficult.

Threatening to suck him off on the sidewalk, dry humping him inside the QuickStop, grabbing his ass and cupping his balls in front of the pet store at the mall . . . when really all the boy has to do is grin in that sly way he has, or comb those long fingers through his own blonde curls, and Bob's cock salutes.

It's why he never meets Jay's gaze in public. Avoids those green-gold eyes and those pale pink lips and that sweet face as best he can because if he didn't, he'd forever be pushing Jay into the nearest corner, the nearest shadow, and devouring his mouth, wrestling with zippers and Y-fronts and getting them both arrested for indecent exposure.

Or worse, much much worse, he'd miss something, a look or a sudden movement from a stranger or a sometime friend, and his Jay might end up bruised or cut or worse. And he can't let that happen. Ever.

So tonight, Bob waits, and Jay drinks his coffee and rubs his ass against Bob's leg. And they think about the same thing. About that moment a few years back when the gig was suddenly up.

It wasn't even a dramatic moment, on its face. 

Ten or twelve weeks sharing an apartment, sharing breakfasts, if you still called the first meal of the day breakfast when it was eaten at noon, sharing space on the couch and cigarettes and joints and beers and the occasional movie. Pretty in Pink, as Bob remembered it, they were watching Pretty in Pink and Jay was holding forth on the sappiness of the entire flick.

Animated and electric and waving his hands around, as usual, and Bob had long since stopped watching the film and was instead watching his roommate, his beautiful, mercurial roommate. A few months of regular meals and unmolested sleep looked good on him, had chased away the dark circles under his eyes and softened his bony angles.

One of those hands had brushed Bob's arm and it was like being set on fire, the flames licking through his bloodstream and seeking out his cock, which stiffened immediately. The chatter had stopped and Jay had turned, hollow light from the television flickering across his face and Bob knew, as he had countless other times, that the boy was struggling with a similar response.

For his part, Jay remembered nothing about the movie, or his endless talking, which poured out all the time, unbidden by Bob or even himself. Main thing he remembered was Bob's eyes. Dark and deep and loving and patient. Waiting. Just waiting.

He'd been aroused for awhile, his cock full and straining against his zipper, shit, just sitting there on the couch next to the man was enough by that point to drive him half mad, and he'd planned on jerking off the minute they went their separate ways at bedtime. Maybe even finding himself a bitch the next day, someplace warm to put his poor, tormented dick, but then he'd touched Bob by mistake.

Silent Bob had been wearing a short sleeved shirt that night, something he didn't usually do, so Jay's fingers had touched bare skin. Warm bare skin had registered somewhere in the back of his brain, someplace primal and hungry for all the human touch he'd never had, and he hadn't been able to stop himself turning and looking into those brown eyes.

That had been the end of it. The end of all pretense. 

Hadn't been a wild fuckfest that followed, just a kiss. Jay had leaned in slowly, hesitant despite all the signals both of them had sent and received since the day he'd taken up residence on the couch. Bob had met him halfway, sitting up, leaning forward.

For a few seconds it was all Jay could do to keep breathing as he explored Bob's lips with his own. And then Bob's tongue had slipped out, dipping inside his mouth, and his strong hands had come up to cup Jay's face, his fingers gently sliding into the golden hair at his temples.

Jay thought he might die right there, that his heart might just stutter too many times to right itself, or he'd forget to breathe altogether. It felt so fucking good. So fucking good. So fucking safe and perfect to have Bob holding his face and his tongue so carefully tracing every contour of his mouth.

And then he'd recovered himself and his own tongue kicked into gear, and it was a whole new fucking world then, tasting Bob, tasting beer and tobacco and some sweetness he couldn't quite describe because it wasn't just on his tongue, it was rolling through his brain and spreading through his heart like liquid gold.

His own hands found Bob's face, stroking his beard and his cheeks and his jaw and his earlobes and his neck and fuck, Bob's skin was so fucking soft and warm.

Yeah, warm. Silent Bob was all about warm. Warmth that couldn't help but melt the ice that always fills Jay's bones.

He looks back again at Bob, whose face is flushed from stoically withstanding ten minutes of Jay's rump grazing his leg. Time to take his Bob home, to their home, to the safety of that apartment and that couch, away from all the eyes and the dangers of the business that puts food on their table. Time to take his Bob home and drop the walls he's maintained all fucking day long.

"Come on, Lunchbox, let's get the fuck outta here."

Silent Bob's eyes light up and he smiles. Finally! Finally they were on their way home. He follows Jay out of the smoky bar, down the street, and onto the bus which is just now pulling up, barely listening to the stream of words that flow from his partner's mouth. 

Scans the aisles and the seats as they make their way to the back, and once they're sitting down and he's sure there's no threat about, he puts an arm around his boy, whose mouth stops and whose shoulders begin to relax.

Bob knows about the ice, the cold. Became his mission in life quite some time ago to give his warmth to this slender, fragile boy, at least a little bit every single day, as much as he can tolerate. He can't wait for the bus to pull up outside their building, to follow his boy up the stairs and into the sanctuary of their apartment.

To love Jay long into the dark night, holding back the demons, wrapping him in warmth until the chill has been driven from every corner of his slim body, and hold him tight until morning.


End file.
